


Bad At Making Friends

by fabrega



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Canon Era, M/M, Post-Fall of Overwatch
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-28
Updated: 2016-12-28
Packaged: 2018-09-12 18:54:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,828
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9085465
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fabrega/pseuds/fabrega
Summary: "Every few months, Reyes disappears for a couple of days," Sombra says. "No indication of where he's going, no real warning, just poof and he's gone.""But he comes back, right? So you don't need to know. You're being nosy.""So this time," she says, "I tracked him."





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [smarshtastic](https://archiveofourown.org/users/smarshtastic/gifts).



Sombra pulls up the map again, then looks up at the motel in front of her. She's double-checked, and even though it makes no sense, this _is_ the address. She makes her way through the parking lot and climbs the stairs up to the second story, looking for room 217. It's easy enough to find, and once she has, she accesses the door logs and looks over her options. Nobody's entered or left since 9:34 last night, so whoever she's looking for must still be inside. The room's window is opened just enough to let some air in, but a cursory examination shows something heavy-looking propped inside the frame, ready to fall loudly if the window is moved. She'll have to do this the old-fashioned way. These old motels haven't updated the firmware on their locks in at least a decade, and honestly, even her abuela could hack these, given five minutes and the right tools. Sombra has the thing cracked in less than 30 seconds, and rather than risk the creaky old door waking any occupants, she tosses her translocator through the opening and zips inside, invisible.

Once inside, she takes a moment to survey the room. It looks like the standard cheap motel room: wallpaper that's slightly peeling; carpet that's slightly stained; a bed that she can tell is sagging a little bit in the middle, even from across the room. A man is lying in the bed, shirtless and fast asleep. There's a table by the window, with a duffel bag and a pair of boots with spurs on them under it and a stack of neatly-folded clothes on top of it. Sombra makes her way over to the table and rifles through the stack; the most egregious piece is an actual pair of honest-to-god chaps, but there's also a shirt with the sleeves rolled up and a cowboy hat and a belt with a large metal buckle that says 'BAMF'. The only other place in the room that seems lived-in at all is the bedside table, which has on it a wallet, a lighter with a skull on it, a packet of cigarillos, and a mean-looking revolver.

She grabs the wallet and sorts through its contents, keeping one eye on the sleeping man as she does. Inside it, she finds three ID cards from different states and countries, all with different names; an Overwatch ID card that seems to be permanently disabled; thirty five dollars and fifteen cents in small bills and change; two condoms; and four receipts to the same diner, all for the same order of scrambled eggs, bacon, and two cups of coffee. She makes note of the dates on the receipts.

She hasn't been the quietest, but the man in the bed still hasn't woken up. His chest rises and falls, and he seems peaceful in sleep. There's not much else she can do without him, so Sombra places the hat from the table onto her head, grabs the gun from the nightstand, goes visible again, and takes a heavy seat on the end of the bed.

The moment she sits down, he starts awake.

"You sleep like the dead," she says to him, looking sideways at him from under the brim of his hat.

His mouth twitches into an almost-smile. "Now, I'm not sure that's quite true." His voice is a low drawl, and she wonders if that's as much of an affect as she assumes the rest of the cowboy shtick is.

She watches as his eyes dart around the room, taking stock. "Don't worry," she says. "If I wanted to kill you, you'd already be dead."

"Reassuring." He sits up in the bed, carefully tucking the sheets around his waist. "So you're not here to kill me, and it doesn't seem like you're here to rob me either. What do you want? How did you even get in here?"

Sombra waves a hand dismissively. "I came in through the door."

He raises an eyebrow at her.

"Well," she amends, "Mostly the door. I have my tricks. The real question is, who are you?"

"Ladies first."

Sombra snorts. "Okay, I'll tell you what I know." She twirls the revolver around idly on one finger. "Human, male, metal arm with a skull painted on it, approximately one hundred years old, into not-particularly-tasteful cowboy cosplay--"

"Hey!"

"--with a gun with a spur on it and a belt that announces to everyone that you're Bad At Making Friends--"

" _Hey_."

"--there are three ID cards in your wallet, none with your real name or the name you gave at the motel's front desk, and an old Overwatch card you stole from somewhere. And--and here's the big one--I think you know Gabriel Reyes."

Surprise flashes across the man's face and is gone just as quickly. "Reyes? Isn't he that Overwatch guy, blew the whole place up? I heard that he's dead."

"That's what he tells me."

He looks nonplussed by the grin she gives him. "If you're pretty sure the Overwatch card isn't mine, why would I know this dead Overwatch guy?"

"That's what I'm asking you," she says. "If you're not Overwatch, why do you have an old card? And if you are, why haven't I heard of you?"

"You heard of a lot of Overwatch agents?" The man looks like he wants to be watching her, but his eyes keep getting drawn to the gun she's holding. It obviously means a lot to him, which does nothing to make her want to stop (safely) mishandling it.

"I've heard of a lot of people. It's my business."

"Strange sort of business." The man sighs. "So what makes you think I know this maybe-dead guy, and what does it matter?"

"Reyes is my boss, and my friend. And every few months, he disappears for a couple of days. No indication of where he's going, no real warning, just _poof_ and he's gone."

"But he comes back, right? So you don't _need_ to know. You're being nosy."

Sombra ignores him. "So this time, I tracked him." She neglects to mention that her tracker had only worked as long as Reyes hadn't gone into his wraith form; she'd lost him as soon as he'd reached this town. "I know he came to this little town in the middle of nowhere, and then I was able to cross-reference times he'd been away with the local motel records, and--"

"And?"

"And you, _amigo_." She drawls the word the way she's sure he would. "You're the intersection of all the data, so you have to know something."

She doesn't like the look he gives her. It's--she'd prefer it if he was being smug. She'd know how to deal with smug. "That's some good detective work you've done, darlin'." She glares at him. "But I can't help but feel there's something you're maybe overlooking."

"Oh?"

"So you think I know Gabe Reyes, okay, sure. And you're pretty sure I ain't Overwatch, right, because you've got some kind of list? The question you haven't asked, Sombra, is _who gave you that list_?"

*

It's a bit of a blur after that. Sombra is fairly sure that she agrees to accompany the mysterious man to breakfast? She definitely agrees to him getting up and showering and getting dressed; while he is in the shower, she uses her gloves to pull up the UI to her database and searches angrily through her files in various combinations, trying to figure out how she missed this.

_OVERWATCH SECRET AGENTS_

_OVERWATCH COWBOY AGENTS_

_OVERWATCH COWBOY_

_OVERWATCH GABRIEL REYES RECRUITS_

_OVERWATCH GABRIEL REYES FRIENDS_

_OVERWATCH GABRIEL REYES ENEMIES_

_OVERWATCH COWBOY WHO HAS A DUMB FACE_

_WHY IS THERE A COWBOY IN OVERWATCH_

"Name's McCree," the man calls from the bathroom. "Jesse McCree. Smart kid like you, you'd figure it out eventually, but seeing as you're such a good friend of Gabe's, might as well introduce myself."

She types _JESSE MCCREE_ into her database, and gets back zero results. When she widens her search to the whole net, she gets a couple of results that look pertinent: outstanding warrants from an array of local police departments, a shady-looking craigslist post about gunslingers for hire, a UN press release about him receiving a medal. With a swipe of her finger, she transfers the information into her personal database.

McCree exits the bathroom fully dressed, and Sombra bursts out laughing. She didn't think it was possible, but the cowboy getup looks even more ludicrous on him than it did in its component parts. His spurs are _jingling_.

"I can only assume that your laughter is of the aesthetic appreciation variety," McCree says, peering in the mirror to make sure that his preposterous hat is cocked just right.

"You look _ridiculous_."

She's surprised how genuine his frown looks. "I suppose that you think your getup looks any better?" He gestures vaguely at all of her.

"Uh, yeah, _of course_."

"How long does it take to make your hair do that every morning? And what, you're too cool for real shoes?"

"Okay, I was wrong, you're not a hundred years old, you're a _thousand_ years old."

McCree opens his mouth to respond, then closes it again abruptly, giving her a lopsided grin. "I bet you annoy the shit out of Reyes." If Sombra didn't know better, she'd think he sounded fond.

*

"So how do you know Gabe?" Sombra asks. (She has never dared to call him 'Gabe' before, but if this cowboy can, she _certainly_ can.) "You said you had some answers for me." They are walking away from the motel and headed somewhere, Sombra can only presume to breakfast. She's no slouch, but McCree's strides are long and purposeful and she finds herself lagging behind.

"You sure this can't wait until breakfast?" McCree looks back at her. She fixes him with a glare, and he concedes, slowing his steps to match hers. He spins out his history for her: recruited into Overwatch from a life of crime at seventeen; served under Commander Reyes for over a decade; left before it got too hot, both figuratively and literally. He does not go into the details of the leaving, but Sombra gathers that it was something of a sore subject between him and his commander.

Sombra is in the business of information, and she does not take kindly to being lied to, even by omission. She frowns at McCree. "That doesn't explain the motel room. It doesn't explain what would make him travel all the way across the country to meet you here, especially since it sounds like you two didn't part on the best of terms."

"That's not what you asked," McCree says, a chiding tone in his voice. "And besides, lotta water under the bridge since then. You want to know the answer to those questions, you're gonna have to ask your friend Reyes at breakfast."

" _What_." Sombra stops up short. "You set me up?!"

"No, a setup would be me not telling you that he would be joining us for breakfast until it was too late for you to do anything about it. This is me giving you a choice. You're gonna confront him about this at some point, because that's how you do--"

Sombra glares at him.

"Go ahead, tell me I'm wrong." McCree waits, but Sombra just looks away. "And my thinking was you'd be less likely to be murdered if the confrontation happened in public."

Sombra scoffs. "We're friends. He would _never_ ," she says, but she'd be lying if she said she didn't feel a flicker of doubt.

*

She parts ways with McCree before they reach the diner, but her curiosity gets the better of her and she tails him, invisible, the rest of the way there. The diner is fairly nondescript, what Sombra would have imagined if someone had told her to picture a stereotypical small-town American diner. Through the big windows, she can see red and white-striped booths, a counter surrounded by red-topped stools, an omnic waitress in an old-style button-up uniform with a sewn-on name tag that says BARB, and an ancient jukebox in the corner. McCree takes a lounging seat in one of the booths, and the waitress brings him a cup of coffee.

She doesn't notice Reyes--Gabe--arrive until he's already in the diner, and she's not sure if he had managed to slip past her on foot or in wraith form. He's not in his full uniform, with the bone-white mask and the claws; he has on the coat, the pants, the hood, but none of the tactical gear and none of the spikes. She's not sure she's seen him in public without the mask before, only around the Talon base and even then, only around people he trusts. Here, his hood is up, but his face is visible in the shadows below it, and she already has more questions than she's probably going to get answers to by the time he walks up to the booth where McCree is seated, leans over, and presses his face up against McCree's face.

 _Un beso_ , her brain offers, but no, there's no way. _No way_. That doesn't make any sense. This is Gabriel Reyes, the _Reaper_ \--

He sits across from McCree and smiles.

The waitress comes over, bringing Gabe a cup of coffee that Sombra knows he can't drink, and takes out her order pad. Sombra watches, mesmerized, as McCree orders breakfast--she can't tell what from outside, but given everything, she is going to guess an order of eggs and a side of bacon--and Gabe's eyes don't leave his face, his gloved hand tracing idle lines along McCree's metal fingers. She's been working with Gabe for a while now, but she's not sure she's ever seen him this relaxed before, let alone anything that could be construed as affectionate.

Well, she thought she'd been working with Gabe. It's pretty obvious now that she's been working with Reyes and that she's only just met Gabe.

*

Sombra is back at the Talon base when Reyes returns. She and Amélie fall into lock-step with him as he exits his commandeered transport, and she studies him while Amélie briefs him on mission reports from while he's been away. They walk and talk, and while the Reaper mask doesn't convey any emotion, Sombra's pretty sure that even if she didn't know where he'd been, she'd be able to tell from the calm in his voice and his stride that he's more relaxed now than he had been when he left. 

Amélie finishes up and peels off to tend to other business. Sombra knows she's annoyed by the way Reyes has been disappearing. It was during one of their infrequent-but-slowly-becoming-more-regular friendly chats around the metaphorical Talon water cooler that Sombra had learned about the disappearances in the first place, that they weren't sanctioned missions and that nobody knew where he was going. She hadn't told Amélie that she was going after him this time, but when she'd left she had intended to tell her all about it when she returned, a little bit of fun gossip between girls. However, after meeting McCree--and knowing Amélie's complicated past with Overwatch--she's still on the fence about that.

Sombra stays after Amélie leaves, and she and Reyes walk together in silence until they reach the door to his quarters. Once there, he finally asks, "Did you need something?"

She smiles at him sweetly and says, "Your cowboy seems nice."

Before she knows what's happened, he has her pinned against the wall, his forearm heavy against her throat. "What did you _do_ ," he says, his voice tense, his teeth gritted.

She scrabbles for a moment, pulling with both hands at his arm and gasping for air. She thinks, fleetingly, about what McCree had said about murder. Then she grabs for her translocator, tosses it as far as she can down the hallway, and jumps to it. Reyes ought to have seen that coming, and that he didn't tells her a lot about how clearly he's thinking right now.

"I didn't _do_ anything," she says between wheezing breaths. "I followed you, and I met him, and--"

He stalks over, grabs her by the arm, and drags her into his quarters.

"Who have you told?"

"No one! Just you." She looks around for another exit, because Reyes is standing between her and the door, but his quarters are set up almost exactly like hers are, with a single point of entry and a tiny window that doesn't open wide enough to be useful, even for her.

"Explain," he says, finally letting go of her arm. 

"I tracked you. You're my friend, and sometimes you leave without telling us where you're going, and what would happen if you got into trouble somewhere and nobody was there to help you?"

As she speaks, Sombra flits around the room, no longer looking for an exit, just looking. He's got all the same furniture she does (bed, closet, desk, chair, dresser) and...that's pretty much it. The only sign that anyone lives there at all is a small, potted cactus sitting on the narrow window ledge. It's squat, green, and prickly, with one small flower blooming on its top. The pot it's sitting in is made of uneven clay and appears to be decorated with the same pattern that lined the edge of McCree's serape.

"I'm already dead; not much else they can do to me." (They both know that's not true.) "And we're not--you don't track your friends."

Sombra scoffs. "Uh, yeah, I absolutely do."

A sigh hisses its way out of Reyes, and he lifts a hand to his face and rubs a spot on the forehead of his mask like he feels a headache coming on, though Sombra has no idea why he would. When he pulls his hand away, the mask comes with it, and Sombra's face to face with him. It's always been a little unsettling for her, but now that she's seen him smile...

"So what did your little fact-finding mission find out?" he asks.

She shrugs. "Only what McCree told me--"

"You _talked_ to him? No, of course you did." He shakes his head. "What did he tell you?"

"I asked him how he knew you. He told me that you were friends, and then you weren't, and now you are again. He didn't tell me how you guys made up." She smirks at him. "He also didn't tell me that you two were--" She takes the thumb and forefinger of one hand and presses their pads together to form a circle, then moves the index finger of her other hand in and out of it.

Reyes takes a deep breath, and his fingers curl in the air in a kind of choking motion, but he lets the breath back out again and very obviously forces himself to relax.

"You kill me in here, everybody's going to know you did it," Sombra reminds him, grinning.

He gives her a look that says _you're lucky you're useful_. It's okay, though; Sombra's used to looks like those. She doesn't stop smiling, just takes a seat on his bed and pats the empty space beside her. He looks skeptical, but sighs and sits next to her.

Sombra hadn't expected that to work. "So what happened?"

Reyes shrugs, not quite meeting her eyes. His expression goes a little soft. "I tried to kill him."

"So romantic!"

"Turns out there were mercenaries after both of us," Reyes continues, ignoring her interruption. "If we hadn't worked together, neither one of us would have made it out alive. As it was, we barely did--we had barricaded ourselves into the basement of an abandoned building, and they brought it down on top of us. Took us three days to make it out."

"And those three days trapped in the building, _that's_ when you guys--" Sombra makes the hand gesture again. Reyes growls and grabs her wrist, forcing the in-and-out movement to cease, but that's not going to stop her; she moves her other hand instead. It's a little more awkward, not her dominant hand, but--

Reyes grabs her other wrist too. " _No_. He tried to kill me. Given the circumstances, I can't blame him for it. But we ended up talking."

He finally drops her wrists, and Sombra rubs at them, grimacing. "He said there had been a lot of water under the bridge."

"Turns out his side of the argument... wasn't as wrong as I'd thought it was. And, well--"

"You missed him," Sombra guesses.

He nods, a faraway look in his eyes. Then he focuses on Sombra, and he frowns. "And I'm not going to let you take him away from me again."

Sombra is taken aback. "I just like to know things--"

"And if you just _happen_ to use the things you know to blackmail people, that's, what, an unintended side effect?"

"I don't blackmail my friends!" she huffs.

"Don't you?"

"If you thought I would, why would you tell me all this?"

He takes a deep breath and lets it out.

*

Reyes tells her before the next time he leaves. She knows it's a test, and the first thing she does is go talk to Amélie.

"I've been thinking," she says, leaning down to prop her elbows on the table where Amélie is carefully disassembling and cleaning her rifle. "We should take a girls day, not tell anyone where we're going, hit up a spa or something."

Amélie's eyes lift from her rifle to give Sombra a suspicious look.

"I mean, Reyes does it all the time and doesn't get in trouble. Why shouldn't we?"

Amélie looks her up and down once, then smiles a dangerously agreeable smile. "If there is any trouble, it was your idea, _non_?"

Sombra grins back. "Absolutely."

They leave before Reyes does. They spend the better part of a day in transit to the spa Sombra found that is the perfect intersection of _quality_ and _won't care that we're international terrorists_ , two days getting pampered with hot stone massages and pedicures and mud baths, several hours making out, a full hour where Amélie attempts to pretend that they haven't just made out, several more hours doing a little bit more than making out, and then the better part of a day on their way back to base. When they get back, Reyes has already returned. Even if he hadn't, Sombra's not sure Amélie would notice in her current loose-limbed, practically post-coital state. (She likes this version of Amélie a lot, and hopes she gets to see more of her.)

When she gets back to her quarters, there's a cactus sitting on her bed. It's a relatively small cactus, round, in a pot that matches the one she'd seen in Reyes' room. On its top is a tiny sombrero, tilted at a jaunty angle.

She moves it to the windowsill and smiles.


End file.
